MAY. What a month so far! Apart from the incredible hot and sunny weather which now might be in the past, it’s been full of headlines, a new Pope and all the pomp and circumstance for those few days, Eurovision, the ongoing saga of Donald Trump and his twists and turns, he must be dizzy with himself, certainly it looks as if he can’t see straight. There was VE Day and The Supreme Court ruling on a woman’s birth right, a subject which sent the media crazy for a while, that frenzy has now died down with a lot of people advising on uni-sex lavatories with separate cubicles being the way forward. It happens round the world although a squat toilet in Bangladesh has its drawbacks.
The ‘pissoirs’ in Paris have given way to public toilet ‘cabins’ known as sanisettes adapted for use in many countries and offering more privacy, so unisex may be the way forward here, an enclosed booth with a full door offering privacy. In France I had witnessed with some alarm women having no problem using men’s facilities although, much to my embarrassment my mother did this in a cafe in central Belfast when there was a queue for the ladies. We’ve come a long from the days of Thomas Crapper who invented and developed the ‘necessary’ in the late 19th century. Today it’s heated seats and, I got the surprise of my life when a posh toilet in a London hotel also offered up the benefits of a bidet!
Advice Not To Be Sneezed At
May is also hay fever month and it’s rampant at the moment, research in Northern Ireland has found the season has increased on average by 20 days. I’m on antihistamine but made sure it was the non-drowsy type because hay fever is no excuse for imperfect driving. The car insurance company CompareNI warn if an accident occurs, drivers could face a charge of driving without due care and attention, including effects of antihistimine medication. It is illegal here to drive whilst unfit through drugs and the law does not distinguish between illegal drugs and over the counter medications. A drug-driving conviction carries between three to nine penalty points, a minimum one-year driving ban, unlimited fines up to £2500, up to six months in prison and a criminal record. Additionally, the offence remains on a driver’s licence for 11 years.
General advice is carry sunglasses, water, tissues and safe medication in the car and close the windows to keep the pollen away from direct contact.
Shakespeare Wrote
Leo Convery.
As it fell upon a day/In the merry month of May,/Sitting in a pleasant shade/Which a grove of myrtles made,/Beasts did leap, and birds did sing,/Trees did grow, and plants did spring; …….
But for me my friend Leo Convery has bettered him. Leo who is now almost 87 only began writing in June 2009; on the longest day of the year he took an A4 writing pad and a pen to the garden sunhouse, sat down on the old couch and at the top of the page wrote 21.6.2009. “I was surprised, I hated writing as it was a difficult thing for me with dyslexia. But,” he adds, “the spirit within demanded me to express what was in my mind and I rose to the challenge”. He’s a man of the earth, a nursery man growing plants for sale. He has met people from all walks of life and many of them told him he should write a book about his experiences. He credits writer Paul Clements, (whose latest book, ‘A Year in the Woods: Montalto through the Seasons’ is out this month), for encouragement and a friendship was made.
A member of the Portglenone Writer’s Group he has published many poems and his own autobiography, ‘The Island Boy’, tales of growing up by the banks of the Bann, now in ‘Pathways of Life’ he charts his course through his life, gentle and rough, love stories and sad endings, the old ways of the country, a testament to a lifestyle that sadly no longer exists. He talks of the wind singing softly in the telephone wires, the drill plough preparing for the dropping of potatoes.
May Flowers
Fifty metre from the house/Where we were born/A little brook/With a silver tongue/ Showed us many things/In our young life./Silverfish and slippery eels./Where ducks made love/Then guarded their young/Songbirds sang in early spring,/A cuckoo from afar/Called, tricking its way./We ran and played/Along its sides,/Using its waters in many ways,/Along its banks, lots of plants/But none so bright/As golden Mayflowers.
Proceeds of Leo’s most beautiful book will support Children in Crossfire Derry.
Available from Convery’s Island Nurseries Portglenone 028 2582 1797 or Children in Crossfire Email: info@childrenincrossfire.org Price £8
Driving to Ballycastle last week was a joy, the hedgerows and the fields were as if a snow blizzard had struck Co. Antrim, the hawthorn bushes were groaning under the weight of their white flowers. It was super spectacular.
Have you noticed the new ‘in’ word is super? Super excited, super annoyed, super proud, super duper. Interesting that super duper is an Americanism first used to help rhyming in Irving Berlin’s 1927 song Puttin’ On The Ritz.
Dressed up like a million dollar trooper
Trying hard to look like Gary Cooper
Super-duper
Come, let’s mix where Rockefellers
Walk with sticks or “umberellas”
In their mitts
Puttin’ on the Ritz